Image Processing Apparatus and Method of Providing High Sensitive Color Images

1. An image processing apparatus, comprising: a color image processor configured to generate a first transformed image with lower-resolution and higher-brightness than those of a first image including color information corresponding to a wavelength band of visible light, from the first image; an edge information extractor configured to extract edge information from a second image including image information of a band wider than that of the first image, wherein the second image is an image captured from the same scene as the first image; and an image restoring unit configured to generate a restored image using the first transformed image and the edge information of the second image, wherein the first transformed image has a brightness automatically set to be higher by a factor than the first image and a resolution automatically set to be lower by the same factor than the first image.

2. The image processing apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the color image processor performs binning on the first image which combines at least two pieces of pixel information detected by at least two pixel-based sensors to generate one piece of pixel information, so as to generate the first transformed image.

3. The image processing apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the edge information extractor separates a high-frequency image signal of the second image from a low-frequency image signal of the second image, and extracts the high-frequency image signal as edge information.

4. The image processing apparatus of claim 3 , wherein the separating of the high-frequency image signal of the second image from the low-frequency image signal of the second image is performed by Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) or Wavelet-Transform (WT).

5. The image processing apparatus of claim 4 , wherein in response to a wavelet-transformed image divided into the first-frequency image signal and the low-frequency image signal being generated from the second image by the edge information extractor, the image restoring unit replaces the low-frequency image signal part of the second image by the first transformed image and inverse-transforms the resultant image, so as to generate the restored image.

6. The image processing apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the image restoring unit generates the restored image by interpolating the first transformed image based on the edge information of the second image.

7. The image processing apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the first image is sensed from visible-light wavelengths of optical signals among incident optical signals, and the second image is sensed from white signals, white signals with infrared rays, infrared signals, or complementary wavelengths of the incident optical signals.

8. An image processing method, comprising: generating a first transformed image having lower resolution and higher brightness than those of a first image having a color wavelength band of visible light, from the first image; extracting edge information from a second image including image information of a band wider than that of the first image, wherein the second image is an image captured from the same scene as the first image; and generating a restored image using the first transformed image and the edge information of the second image, wherein the first transformed image has a brightness automatically set to be higher by a factor than the first image and a resolution automatically set to be lower by the same factor than the first image.

9. The image processing method of claim 8 , wherein the generating of the first transformed image comprises performing binning on the first image which combines at least two pieces of pixel information detected by at least two pixel-based sensors to generate one piece of pixel information.

10. The image processing method of claim 8 , wherein the extracting of the edge information comprises separating a high-frequency image signal of the second image from a low-frequency image signal of the second image, and extracting the high-frequency image signal of the second image as the edge information.

11. The image processing method of claim 10 , wherein the separating of the high-frequency image signal of the second image from the low-frequency image signal of the second image is performed by Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) or Wavelet Transform (WT).

12. The image processing method of claim 11 , wherein the extracting of the edge information comprises generating a wavelet-transformed image divided into the high-frequency image signal and the low-frequency image signal from the second image, and the generating of the restored image comprises replacing the low-frequency image signal part of the wavelet-transformed image by the first transformed image and inverse-transforming the resultant image, thereby generating the restored image.

13. The image processing method of claim 8 , wherein the generating of the restored image comprises interpolating the first transformed image based on the edge information of the second image.

14. The image processing method of claim 8 , wherein the first image is sensed from visible-light wavelengths of optical signals among incident optical signals, and the second image is sensed from white signals, white signals with infrared rays, infrared signals, or complementary wavelengths of incident optical signals.

15. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a program to perform image processing, comprising instructions to cause a computer to: generate a first transformed image having lower resolution and higher brightness than those of a first image having a color wavelength band of visible light, from the first image; extract edge information from a second image including image information of a band wider than that of the first image, wherein the second image is an image captured from the same scene as the first image; and generate a restored image using the first transformed image and the edge information of the second image, wherein the first transformed image has a brightness automatically set to be higher by a factor than the first image and a resolution automatically set to be lower by the same factor than the first image.